Brighton and Hove Albion v Crystal Palace: The key points from Roy Hodgson's post match press conference

Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson felt Anthony Knockaert got the 'benefit of the doubt' for an 'over the top' challenge but says his side were 'unlucky' to lose the game.
Roy HodgsonRoy Hodgson
Roy Hodgson

On the potential sending off of Anthony Knockaert in the first minute:

“He committed a bad foul early on. I don’t think it was a malicious foul, it was a winger’s tackle wasn’t it? Trying, in a derby game, to show his commitment but it was over the ball and a bad foul.

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“I presume the referee gave him the benefit of the doubt on that one but certainly it was a fantastic goal they scored to win the game.

“We were incensed by the challenge of course.

“I thought it looked like a very dangerous one. I was very pleased to see Luka Milivojević actually get to his feet again.

“My first thought was to turn to Cheikhou Kouyaté and tell him to warm up as I had visions of him not being able to carry on."

On the impact of that decision on the rest of the game:

“In actual fact we had 95, 96 minutes after that to try and win the game and we’re weren’t able to do so.

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“I’m not terribly pleased to be discussing an incident in the first 45 seconds and there’s a lot to talk about in the game of football.

“Once again we come down to refereeing decisions and in fact from now with VAR it’s meat and drink for [the media] because that’s all that will ever be discussed after a game of football.

What goes on in the actual football pitch will be ignored in future, it’ll be down to a refereeing decision; right or wrong.

“To say it was malicious you’d have to know that intent was in the player’s mind and I don’t know that at all but it was over the top of the ball, that was the thing.

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“As long as I’ve been involved in football it’s always been one of those things that you get incensed about if it happens against one of your team and that you deplore.”

On the match as a whole:

“I think we can consider ourselves a little bit unlucky. The first one the ball got caught in the wind then the little setup coming off James Tomkins for Glenn Murray to a perfect position.

“For him to put them one up, despite the fact at that stage they’d not really been in our penalty area, then getting back into the game at 1-1 and looking like we might go on to really capitalise on possession and the fact we were pushing hard against a well drilled and well packed defence we concede that goal.

“It’s one of those unstoppable ones from 20 yards that goes in off the post and the crossbar right in the joint.

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“I think that over the 90 minutes or 95 minutes we worked hard enough and tried hard enough to use our possession and our corner kicks and freekicks to get the goals we needed but weren’t able to so as a result it’s a very disappointing day.

“It’s always hard to lose games at home. It’s even harder to lose them in derby matches and it’s exceptionally hard to lose them when, in actual fact, it’s been the home team and my team that I thought was pretty much in control of the game.”